Information management systems organize and backup information, i.e., “production data”, generated during the operation of client computing systems. Information management systems enable companies, and other computing system users, to comply with legal requirements and other business needs by providing retrievable copies, i.e., “secondary copies”, of the production data for each client computing system. Information management systems make various types of secondary copies, such as a backup copy, a snapshot copy, a hierarchical storage management (“HSM”) copy, an archive copy, and other types of copies. Each of the types of secondary copies have advantages and weaknesses as compared to each other type of secondary copy, but each type of secondary copy generally enables a company to restore settings or data of a computing system to a particular past point-in-time.
To illustrate, an example company that would use an information management system might be a clothing manufacturer, e.g., of denim jeans, that is based out of San Francisco, Calif. The jeans manufacturer uses hundreds of computers to conduct business operations, i.e., to generate production data. The generated production data includes, among other things, reports generated by accountants, benefits records maintained by human resources (“HR”), spreadsheets predicting the future of fashion trends, communications between internal departments, orders placed with third-party material distributors, records showing compliance with international manufacturing laws, and other business-critical information. The jeans manufacturer would be at a tremendous loss if all production data were lost, so the jeans manufacturer uses an information management system to organize and create secondary copies of production data. Information management systems generally use at least one managing computing device to transfer the non-production copies of production data to non-production storage media, such as magnetic drives, magnetic tapes, optical media, solid-state media, or cloud storage devices. With each transfer to the non-production storage media, the managing computing device keeps record of which client computing device information is stored at which non-production storage media, device or location. The managing computing device may compile the records into a table or other data structure (“managing computing device database”) to keep track of where the non-production data for each client computing device is stored. In the case that one or more of the client computing devices experiences a failure, the managing computing device uses its database as a reference to restore lost production data using the non-production data stored at the non-production storage media. However, if the storage manager database suffers from a disaster, e.g., the storage manager hard drive is damaged in an earthquake or flood, the mappings of non-production data of the hundreds of client computing devices to specific locations on non-production storage media may all be lost. Thus, the loss of the managing computing device database may render all of the non-production data effectively unusable because the ability to restore the non-production to a particular one of the hundreds of client computing devices is lost.
Currently, to prevent such catastrophic losses, information management systems use techniques that require a company to make various types of secondary copies of the managing computing device database before the managing computing devices database encounters a disaster. However, creation and management of the secondary copies of portions of the information management system require additional resources and therefore raise complexity and overall cost of the information management system. Some of the current techniques include: maintaining a second managing computing device, and creating a secondary copy of the managing computing device database in the non-production storage media. To maintain a second managing computing device, the information management system causes the second managing computing device to mirror the database of the primary managing computing device. The information management system then brings the second managing computing device online to replace the primary managing computing device if the primary managing computing device encounters a disaster.
As an alternative to maintaining a second managing computing device, the information management system can store a secondary copy of the managing computing device database on non-production storage media or at a different or offsite location. If the managing computing device encounters a disaster, the information management system uses the secondary copy of the managing computing device database to create a replacement managing computing device database.
In practice, the jeans manufacturer would have to install a second managing computing device or configure the information management system to install a secondary copy of the managing computing device database in the non-production storage media because these techniques would enable the jeans manufacturer to preserve its valued data. However, if the jeans manufacturer fails to install a second storage manager or fails to configure the storage manager to store secondary copies of the storage manager database, the jeans manufacturer would, according to currently used techniques, lose access to the non-production data until customized software scripts or other time-intensive software could be written to extract the desired information. Further, even if a secondary copy were maintained, e.g. at an offsite and offline location, it can take an intolerable amount of time to restore a failed managing computing device.
The need exists for systems and methods that overcome the above problems, as well as systems and methods that provide additional benefits. Overall, the examples herein of some prior or related systems and methods and their associated limitations are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of existing or prior systems and methods will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon reading the following Detailed Description.